Kendall Francois and the non existant Poughkeepsie Tapes

After knowing the story of the Water Street butcher and watching the movie "The Poughkeepsie Tapes", I decided to see what was out there to learn about Kendall Francois that I hadn't heard before. From talking to a few people I know and reading an article from Tru Tv I had been enlightened on a few new facts.

1. I had learned that he was employed at Arlington Middle School from 1996 - 1997. It weird to hear that because a lot of my current friends went to Arlington Middle.

2. Kendall had also been employed at Arlington High School. When I first heard that I was pretty damn shocked. That is where I currently attend school so it was surprising to hear a serial killer had worked here. As fate would have it, my communications teacher actually met him when he was first employed at Arlington. He was the type of person who, "was pretty shy and kept to himself a lot or not constantly engaging in conversation with everyone".

3. I had learned that there were NO "Poughkeepsie tapes". Kendall Francois undoubtedly killed all 8 of the prostitutes but nowhere in my research or my conversations have I found that he had actually video tapped his killings.
This makes me wonder why John Erick Dowdle decided to base a movie off of the story of Francois.



4. The movie is very inconsistent. In the movie the killer is light skinned. Francois was actually a very dark skinned African American. In real life he had only slayed eight women who were all prostitutes. In the movie the killer, who is supposed to be Francois, kills at least ten people and it seems like he goes out of his way to be overly sadistic. For instance in the movie he kills a man and decapitates him then kills a woman and stuffs the mans head in her stomach, in a ritualistic way. The killer in the movie ran before the cops could try to get him. Francois never fled or really tried to avoid cops, he was an average everyday working and functioning American. He just tried to conceal his murders a little more by hiding all the bodies in his attic. Last but not least in the movie "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" the killer video tapes all his killings and torturous acts to all his victims. In real life there was no evidence that Francois had ever done that. Also, the movie wasn't even filmed in Poughkeepsie, New York.


Ill give "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" the benefit of the doubt by saying it wasa pretty disturbing movie. It dint make me cringe or be scared but I definitely know it will ave to power to scare others. If Hollywood really wants to make a good horror movie than make a movie about the truth. Sometimes the truth is scarier than anything we could ever imagine.

Barack Obama: The Over Coverage

I have been watching a little bit of the coverage of our new president on CNN and all of the other major media stations. It seems to me that they are completely over covering Mr. Obama. I mean the inauguration and his speech was one thing.

Don't get me wrong, I think the man has fantastic potential but I think having to clean up after George Bush's mess will set him a little behind. When I say coverage of Barack Obama I dont mean how the media covers major decisions about the economy or major political issues concerning our country, I mean daily life.

When news stations like CNN don't have any major news to cover, it seems that they start to cover something about Barack Obama. For instance: what kind of dog he has and information about that breed or where he went for a walk.

I mean it is getting kind of ridiculous. In a sense I think they have been over covering him. Isn't there any other story they can be covering about foreign affairs or possible war in Iraq updates or ANYTHING ELSE besides something to do with Barack Obama. I realize he broke major ground by becoming the first African American president and for being our newly elected president at that, but there is only so much to be said about one person. After awhile everyone will be saying a lot of the same things about him, his decisions, and his daily life but in different words then their competition.

I am just as interested in the next political move by the president as much as anyone else but I am not very concerned about what his kids options for school lunch are (thats creepy CNN).

Diving deeper into Mathcore and its inconsistencies as a Genre.

I have been listening to hardcore for around 3 years now. Throughout the years I have heard the term "Mathcore" thrown around a lot as a sub genre. I always wondered what it was because I had never listened to bands that had been dubbed as said sub genre. Today my curiosity had peaked and I decided to really get a true definition of the sonic etiquette known as "Mathcore". I started with the foundations (of what I could only hope was the truth) of Mathcore on Wikipedia. Mathcore is describer as, "A rhythmically complex and dissonant style of metalcore. The term mathcore is suggested by analogy with math rock. Both math rock and mathcore make use of unusual time signatures."

After reading those three sentences it can be assumed, at least for my sake, that this sub genre is the based on a different sub genre. I see no real rhyme or reason for the classification of the type of music as a new genre. Why can't people call it was it is, the technical side metalcore. Speaking of it as this you would be covering all of the main points that justify the title of the genre. Technical as in rapid or complex guitar or other instrumentation. Metalcore as in music that combines metal elements with elements from hardcore music.

To address another point, the vocal style is similar to metalcore. Mathcore bands such as; The Locust, The Number 12 Looks Like You, The Fall Of Troy, and See You Next Tuesday are all know to vary their vocal stylings from High pitched, ear piercing screams or yells to low pitched grunts or spleen rupturing lows. A few bands in the mathcore genre consistently stay with the same vocal type, such as; Converge and the Dillenger Escape Plan. I do not believe that a vocal style is enough to make a sub genre out of.


The last point I must address, the use of breakdowns. A lot if not all of the mathcore bands include some kind of use of a breakdown of some sort. It might not be the main focus of their songs but they are usually their in one or two of the songs. Thus, keeping them in the metalcore sub genre. They just wouldn't be the shining image of what you would assume a metalcore band is. They would be more like the bastard step children of metalcore. They still have to keep the family name but they get to do their own thing.

I realize that you could argue the point that bands look to math for outlandish time signatures but so do a lot of technical bands. Remember a certain band, Dragonforce? Their technical on a whole different level and a lot of their time signatures are pretty insane. They are also considered metal. Isn't that another inconsistency with genre labeling.

It just proves to me that trying to label music into different sub genres is very pointless. Why should people label music? I suppose to know what you are going to listen to. Although I believe people should take some risks and look outside of the normal everyday stuff they hear on the radio and look for music that they would truly like. You never know, if you search then you may stumble upon your next favorite band/artist.

The Blog Title.

Well, Hello Everyone. I'm Thomas, I am an amateur photographer from Connecticut. This is not my first blog, I figured I should state that much. I am pretty inconsistent with updating things like this but eventually you will see my posting my rants, diatribes, opinions, and research on here for your viewing (dis)pleasure.

I had decided on this title because unless people have a specific angle for writing when they blog, they have a hard time coming up with a name for a blog. I assumed this was "The Typical Predicament" of the average blogger.

Clever, no?